The Craziest Story Yet!!!

On Wednesday evening Ari and our friend Anthony and I were driving to Montrose, the nearest town for restaurants and grocery stores, etc…And you will never, in a million years, guess what happened!!!

(By the way, I initially wrote this as a statement for the Sherriff’s Office so please forgive me for being dry and deliberately factual. There are several points I make in this that I would never have included had this just been for my blog.) : )

We had just turned onto the main highway and gone about three miles when we had to slow suddenly for a black Jeep that was turning left onto a winding country road called Brown Ranch Rd. We were probably fourth or fifth in line toward the back of the line of cars when we heard shots being fired from the black Jeep into the line of cars. Ari was driving, I was in the passenger’s seat and Anthony was in the back seat behind Ari with his window halfway down. Ari had to slam on the breaks hard and swerve sharply to keep from hitting the car in front of us who had just gotten shot. In the midst of all the craziness, we were shot about three times, and at this point we weren’t sure if it was a real gun or a paintball gun. The shots sounded like a real gun firing. Then, as Anthony’s window was partly down, the group of guys in the Jeep shot directly at Anthony and missed hitting him in the head by a fraction of an inch. Now we knew that they are shooting us with paintballs. When the paintballs hit the cars, they hit with an amazing amount of force and they sounded like they could be a .22 bullet, possibly buckshot, or perhaps a strong pellet gun.

After firing multiple shots at multiple cars, the black Jeep sped off up Brown Ranch Rd. Immediately, Ari turned left up Brown Ranch Rd to catch up to the black Jeep to at least get a license plate number. As we wound our way up the steep and narrow road, we caught up to them about ½ a mile up the road. There were no plates on the vehicle, they had removed them on purpose and they told us later that they had placed the Jeep’s license plates in their glove box.

Anyhow, as we caught up to them, Ari began flashing the headlights, honking the horn and yelling for them to pull over. Both he and Anthony were shouting that they were off duty police officers from Telluride. During this, I am on the phone with 911 explaining that we are being shot at by four guys with paintball guns in a black Jeep with no license plates. At this time the guys in the black Jeep had probably shot our car five or six more times while we were following them trying to get them to pull over. I had been disconnected from 911 at this point, so I redialed and that is when all hell broke loose. They fired over 20 shots strait at Ari’s face. I’m screaming, completely terrified that the windshield is going to break, that they are going to start shooting at us with real guns. I was hunched down as far as I could get in my seat and still have on a seat belt. They had plastered over 20 shots right in front of Ari’s face and the paint was very thick, you could not see through it at all. Finally, They guys in the Jeep realize that they’ve messed with the wrong people and they start to slow down, and quick thinking Ari takes the opportunity to pull our car in front of theirs and force them to stop by cutting them off. During the time the guys were shooting all of those rounds into our windshield, I had grabbed my purse, found my keys and unlocked our glove box where we keep Ari’s gun when we travel. I got the gun out and placed it on Ari’s lap, just in case…I had know idea how bad things were going to get. Anthony took the gun since Ari was driving.

Immediately upon stopping the vehicles, both Ari and Anthony jumped out of the car and start screaming that they are off duty police officers from Telluride and saying that they had better get out of their car and lie face down, hands above their heads on the pavement. I didn’t see most of this happen, I only heard it as I was terribly shaken, freaked out and still speaking with the 911 dispatcher…I was still scrunched down as low as I could get in my seat. I did see Ari physically helping one guy out of the Jeep as well as Anthony doing the same with another of the Jeep’s passengers. Anthony had grabbed Ari’s gun before they got out of our car and from what I could see, a couple of the guys were trying to make a run for it and they were being very---well, they weren’t obeying the verbal commands to get out of the car, so Anthony used some force to remove one of the guys. Ari and Anthony kept the guys all face down on the ground and started calling in the guys information/I.D to their dispatch. At this point the San Miguel Sherriff’s were on their way. As this was all happening another vehicle drove up on the scene and parked behind the black Jeep. It was a new model Jeep wagon, deep red, the driver was a middle aged man with two little kids in the car with him…he had obviously been shot at as well. We could see several spots where his vehicle had been hit by paintballs. Within a few minutes of stopping the chase, I got out of our car while giving info to 911 over my cell phone. I could already feel a significant increase in lower back pain, nerve pain down my right leg and muscle spasms in my low back and between my shoulder blades.

Once San Miguel deputies arrived on scene, Ari and Anthony told them what had happened, they also had me give a written statement. I know they also spoke to the other victim in the dark red Jeep. After that we were free to go. I was in a considerable amount of pain by then so we decided to go to Montrose Memorial Hospital to get me checked out. They took x rays and said that the fusion was fine, but that the muscles and nerves were stained and that it was going to take some time for the inflammation to go down and for me to heal up. To help with the pain, they gave me a shot of morphine and torridol and gave me a flexaryl tablet to take. They sent me home with some vicodin and some flexaryl to get me through the night until I could see my regular doctor. I am still sore all over, especially my neck and shoulders, my low back and my right leg. I have to say that was quite possibly one of the most terrifying experiences of our lives. I am still very upset by the whole thing.

As it turns out, the four guys in the Jeep did have a loaded .22 rifle and a 10 inch blade hunting knife, as well as an additional, fully loaded paintball gun. They also had drug paraphernalia. None of us searched their vehicle because that is something that the responding officers do…those are just the things that were in plain sight. Scary!!! If we would have crashed, if one little thing had gone wrong several people could have been seriously injured and probably died. We were later told that 911 had been getting calls all day from all over the county with complaints of these four guys in the black Jeep doing drive by shootings with their paintball guns. Also, while we were still at the scene, one of the deputy’s told us that a truck driver had just called in the same time we had saying that he’d been shot in the head…he was just two cars in front of us on the highway when they first started shooting at us. If the truck driver had lost control, or something worse, it would have been a horrific accident.

I was told by the Sherriff’s office that three of the guys are over 18, and one of them was 16. I know for sure that the three over 18 spent the night in jail and bonded out the next afternoon. Their initial court hearing is on September 11th at 1:30 p.m. and I plan on testifying against them.